Partner Mary van Kleeck
Mary "Mikie" Lambertine Fleddérus (June 4, 1886 – November 1977) was a Dutch social reformer and researcher who co-led the International Industrial Relations Institute with Mary van Kleeck. She was a pioneer of industrial relations in Europe.[1] The IRI was ‘a two-woman transoceanic operation’ run by van Kleeck and Mary Fleddérus, a Dutch activist and personnel manager of a glass factory in the Netherlands. The two women shared their lives as well as their work, directing the IRI from offices in The Hague and New York. The organization was a conglomeration of disparate interest groups committed to international economic planning: personnel managers, factory inspectors and welfare workers; forward-thinking employers; modernist architects, engineers and doctors; trade union leaders and ‘Taylorites’. Kerstin Hesselgren, Sweden’s Chief Factory Inspector, was one of those involved, and so was Adelaide Anderson, Principal Lady Inspector of Factories in Britain. The IRI sponsored ideas, plans, meetings, conferences and publications, acting as a networking platform for key figures in industrial welfare internationally.
In 1925 Fleddérus was responsible for organising a conference for the International Association for the Study and Improvement of Human Relations in Industry. In the introduction to the report of the Congress she called for an implementation of scientific management which incorporated paying attention to the humanitarian aspects of improving industrial efficiency.[2] In 1944 she co-wrote Technology and Livelihood with van Kleeck.
My published books: